The English Premier League is one of the most popular and exciting football leagues in the world. With millions of fans and billions of dollars in revenue, the Premier League is a global phenomenon. In this project, we will use data analysis to explore the trends, insights, and records that shape the Premier League. We will focus on clubs performance and records. By analyzing the data, we will gain a deeper understanding of the history of the League and how it has evolved over time.

Data used

The main data used is from the premier league seasons 93/94 to 21/22. I’ve used rvest to scrape the data from a website with football data used usually for betting. For the section on managers I also used the wikipedia page on Premier League managers.

Evolution of Premier League Teams Performance

In this section, we will focus on the performance of Premier League teams over time. We will look at data spanning multiple seasons to explore trends in team performance. By analyzing this data, we will gain an understanding of how Premier League teams have evolved and how they have performed relative to each other.

In the plot below, the 7 teams who have played the longest in the league are plotted, with the x-axis being the number of goals the conceded on average per game and the y-axis the average number of goals. The size of each teams marker represents the number of wins they got in that season. We should see a correlation with larger markers in the top right since those are the teams that score the most and concede the least goals on average. You can use the scroll bar under the graph to go through each season from 02/03 to 20/21 and see how the different teams performance has evolved over time.

Some teams have had more consistent performances over the years than others. Interestingly, more goals scored and less conceded doesn’t always result in more wins. In the recent seasons, we can see that Liverpool and Manchester City have been fighting for the top spot in terms of goals scored.

Premier League Win Rates

Let’s now have a look at the win rates of Premier League teams. We will analyze data from all seasons that these teams competed to get an understanding of which teams have been most successful in the league.

This is a plot of the 10 teams with the most games played in the league and their respective win rates.

I think it’s clear that Manchester United is probably the most successful club of all time.

Keep in mind that this is data over all seasons of the league (except for the current, on-going season). Below is the same plot but with only data from the past few seasons to better understand how teams are currently performing and how they stack up against each other.

In more recent seasons United and Arsenal have not been performing as well as before while the win rates of Liverpool, City and Tottenham all have gone up quite a bit!

Why is this though? What lays behind these teams rise to success? We will explore one possible reason in the next section.

Boss Battles

To get an understanding of a possible reason behind some clubs success we will instead of just looking at the clubs, explore the success of the managers who are currently leading teams in the league to get an idea of what impact they’ve had for their club. We will look at each ones win rate over their time as manager.

Note that some current managers are missing from the analysis either because they have only been active during the 22/23 season or that they have not played in the premier league prior to the 22/23 season. The results are based on previous seasons and may not reflect the current state of the league or the performance of certain managers. However, I believe that this still gives an idea of how some managers have been performing.

Pep Guardiola had the highest win rate among the current Premier League managers, followed by Liverpools Jürgen Klopp and then Antonio Conte with Tottenham. Comparing the overall win rates of the clubs to those of the current managers, it looks like these three have also had the biggest positive impact on their respective clubs (there are of course other factors in play too).

Record Breaking Teams

We will now have a look at some Premier League records to see what clubs that have left their mark on the league.

First we have a plot of the most wins in one season for the 10 clubs that have played the most games in the league.

Liverpool and Manchester City tied at the top with 32 wins each. It’s worth mentioning that Manchester City has actually achieved this in two separate seasons.

Let’s now look at the longest streaks of matches won in one season.

Again Liverpool and Manchester City are tied at the top with 18!

Having seen all these results, there is no wonder why there is such an intense rivalry between them! These two teams have consistently been among the top performers in the league, with Liverpool winning the Premier League title in 2019-20 and Manchester City winning in 2018-19 and 2017-18, 2020-21 and 2021-22. The rivalry between these two teams really started in 2014, with City beating Liverpool to the 2013-14 title by just two points on the final day of the season and has only intensified in recent years as they have faced off in some of the most exciting and closely contested matches in the league.

Red and Yellow Cards

To get another view of how the league has evolved over time, we will look at the average number of yellow/red cards given per game in each season.

It looks like the number of red cards per game has gone down quite a bit while the number of yellow cards has increased slightly. This trend could be due to a number of factors such as players behavior changing, changes in the rules of the league, the introduction of VAR or adjustments in the tactics and strategies of teams and players.

The end

In conclusion, our data analysis of the Premier League has shed light on a few insights of the league. From club performance to statistics and records. Our analysis has showed us a bit of the history of the performance of some clubs and managers and identified the clubs that have left their mark.